CENTERVILLE — Longtime Costco customer Leronda Jackson was offended Wednesday when an employee at the retailer’s Centerville store claimed Jackson’s face didn’t match the one on the back of her membership card.
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Costco recently announced a new policy nationwide that requires employees to compare stores’ membership IDs to the person using them, particularly at the self-checkout lanes, since non-members used other people’s IDs.
On Wednesday night, Jackson shared her experience with News Center 7 investigative reporter John Bedell. It all started with a random questioning of self-scan registries, Jackson said, and tensions mounted from there.
“The young lady just said, ‘I need to check your card.’ We do facial recognition. That’s our new policy.” I said, “Yes, I’ve heard about it.”
So the Englewood woman said she gave the clerk her membership card — complete with Jackson’s color photo on the back.
“She said, ‘Well, that’s not you.’ ‘”
“And I said, There’s Leronda Jackson. It’s me. So she said, “No, I’m saying this picture is not the person I see.”
“So I was offended. So I thought, “Excuse me?”
“I said look, this is me, this is my card. And then, as my voice got louder, she said, “Well, I’m sorry, it’s the lighting in the store and maybe I don’t have good eyesight today.”
Jackson finished scanning and paying for her belongings and left. A while later she came back to speak to an assistant manager who apologized. The assistant manager attributed it to a “training issue,” Jackson said.
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She said she was told someone from corporate headquarters would call her on Thursday. News Center 7’s request for comment from company officials at Costco has so far gone unanswered.
The employee never asked for a second ID, Jackson said, which would have solved the problem.
According to CNN, the membership model is critical to Costco’s business. The fees help boost the company’s bottom line and offset expenses, allowing Costco to keep its prices low. Costco is known for offering some of the lowest retail prices. Annual membership fees range from $60 to $120. Costco has strong customer loyalty and claims to achieve a 90 percent global membership renewal rate by the end of 2022. Those fees brought in $4.2 billion in fiscal 2022 out of the $223 billion the retailer earned.
Costco operates nearly 900 warehouses around the world, more than half of them in the United States, The Washington Post reports. In May, Costco listed more than 124 million cardholders.
Jackson said she also shared her experience on her Facebook page, titled Black Women Who Love Costco.
“You’d be surprised how many people this has happened to,” Jackson said.
What does she want on the other side of what happened?
“I want politics to change. Find another way. Or just ask everyone about theirs [membership] card and ID. Or exit the self scan.”
No one checked her while she was pumping gas at Centerville Costco, she said. “No one out there asked if she was really getting that gas,” she noted.
“When it comes to people shopping at Costco who aren’t supposed to, and not just to make customers happy, everyone shows an ID and everyone shows their membership card. Don’t choose [customers to confront] and not cherry picking [customers to confront]’ Jackson said.
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